Homewood

“ If Allan Homewood, Esquire, should by chance meet his wife's maid or any other servant on the stairs, or in one of the innumerable passages of the old fashioned house, it was scarcely likely that he would give more than a passing glance and more than a passing thought to the domestic. If little Betty Hanson should happen suddenly on the master of the house at a turn in the passageway, what more becoming than she should drop her eyes demurely and go on her way? ”

“ Charles Carroll of Homewood died before his father, "the Signer," but the house, Homewood, which the latter built for his son and daughter-in-law in 1809, stands to-day near the Baltimore city limits, at the side of Charles Street Boulevard, amid pleasant modern houses, many of which are of a design not out of harmony with the old mansion. Though not comparable in size with the manor house at Doughoregan, Homewood is an even more perfect house, being one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture to be found in the entire country. ”

“ He certainly did, from the adjoining room came Coombe's big bass voice:
"Sir Josiah Homewood is here and he has brought some friends——"
"Friends, eh! bless me, friends of Homewood, very interesting." His lordship laughed a thin, cackling, unpleasant laugh. "My dear Harold, I think I can promise you some amusement, Sir Josiah Homewood is——"
"Is my husband's father," Kathleen said, and her cheeks suddenly blazed with generous colour. "He is also my very dear friend."
"And therefore entitled to the respect and esteem of all men," said Scarsdale quietly. ”

“ He had rather dreaded the honeymoon, and now had come to realise that it formed the most pleasant period of his life. But now that it had come to its end, he felt a strange reluctance to go to Homewood.
He was young and healthy minded; for such a man to brood over a dream or a vision was impossible. The effect of that May day dream of his had well nigh worn away, the vision of the girl who had come to him in the old garden and kissed him had grown vague and shadowy. ”

“ The whole place—new brick and old stone—seemed doomed to a common fate under the hand of time, when the present Philo Ocumpaugh, succeeding to the property, brought new wealth and business enterprise into the family, and the old house on the hill was replaced by the marble turrets of Homewood, and this hut—or rather the portion open to improvement—was restored to some sort of comfort, and rechristened the bungalow. ”

“ Thrice happy they who live with such a man.
Kathleen knew her father.
"Would you like to have breakfast served you alone quietly in my own little room, dear?" she asked.
"Would I what? Hang it! do you want to get rid of me? Am I not good enough to sit down to breakfast with your absurd friends? Has that gentleman in the white trousers been attending a tennis party? It is somewhat early for tennis parties, is it not? Barely seven yet—is Homewood going to decorate a Church or is he merely masquerading as a Jack in the Green? Where's Scarsdale? Not down yet? ”

“ They are wealthy folk, the Elmacotts, and they love their garden and pride themselves on it and hold that in all Sussex no soil can produce finer flowers and sweeter fruit, and though in this year of grace seventeen hundred and three the house, which is the Manor House of the Parish of Homewood, has no great antiquity, being scarce more than sixty years old, it has about it that completeness, those niceties of detail, the neatness and the order and the well being that are found only in the home which is ruled by a house-proud mistress. ”

“ Betty her name is, because I asked her, and she is Lady Kathleen's maid and all I've got to say is that her ladyship must be the purest and sweetest soul living or she wouldn't have a lovely young thing like that in the same house as her own young husband!"
Scarsdale started. "Why—what do you mean, Mr. Coombe? Is Homewood the type of man who would——"
"Heaven forbid it, there isn't a cleaner, better lad living than Allan Homewood. But there's a certain prayer as runs—'Lead us not into temptation,' Sir Harold and knowing what I know——" Mr. Coombe paused. ”

“ And so I ask you to drink the health of the finest lady I ever met, the loveliest and best—and I tell you when I look at Lady Kathleen, it makes me proud to remember I'm an Englishman!"
"Hear, hear!" said Cutler and Jobson. "If old Homewood were here, Coombe, he'd love you for that," said Cutler.
Coombe might have been a hundred times more vulgar than he was, louder, commoner, more boisterous, but Scarsdale from that moment on would never see any harm in Coombe. A good fellow, an honest man. ”

“ Very different from the spirit of appreciation and emulation shown by the trustees of Johns Hopkins University with regard to the old house, Homewood, in Baltimore, is that manifested in the architecture of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, where, in a city fairly [Pg 76] flooded with examples of buildings, both beautiful and typically American, architectural hints were ignored, and there were erected great stone structures whose chief characteristics are size, solidity, and the look of being "government property." ”

“ Homewood of Homewood Manor House? She would have looked on him with some suspicion, yet there was something so open in his face, his anger was so honest, that she could not, even if she would, suspect him of an interest in pretty Betty, that reflected no credit on him.
"Abram hev thirty-five shillings a week and——"
"And for thirty-five shillings a week you would force this child to marry a man she hates, you would wreck and ruin her life, you would drive her perhaps—God knows—to death—to suicide! Can't you understand that it is not mere dislike she feels for him, it is hate and terror! ”

“ Cutler's running down with me—going to take him down in the car. Hang it, Priestly, you shall come! My daughter-in-law, Lady Kathleen, says all my friends are her friends, and she means it, she's that sort. God bless her! There isn't a truer, sweeter woman on earth and so—so I say God bless her!" The tears came into his eyes, they trickled down his cheek.
Here was honest pride, honest and unfeigned! He lifted his glass of port, he beamed on them and gave them the toast from his heart. "My daughter-in-law, Lady Kathleen Homewood, God bless her!" ”

“ There were many who asked nothing better than to work on the farm, digging, planting or harvesting: indeed, in the summer, one crop would have been ruined altogether by a fierce storm, but for the Tired People, who, from an elderly Colonel to an Australian signaller, flung themselves upon it, and helped to finish getting it under cover—carrying the last sheaves home just as the rain came down in torrents, and returning to Homewood in a soaked but triumphant procession. ”

“ You even set the day when the little Gwendolen should pass from luxury to poverty." Here I cast an involuntary glance about the room where the only sign of comfort was the newly upholstered lounge. "That day was the sixteenth, and we all know what happened on that date. If this is not plain enough—" I had seen his lip curl—"allow me to add, by way of explanation, that you have seen fit to threaten Mrs. Ocumpaugh herself with this date, for I know well the hand which wrote August 16 on the bungalow floor and in various other places about Homewood where her eye was likely to fall." ”

“ To men of this sort, men who are willing to sow in the spring, and patient enough to wait for the ripening in the autumn, England owes most of her prosperity; but ordinary humanity may well be excused if it shrink from the idea of settling down in a spic-and-span new house in an unfinished neighbourhood.
Rupert's humanity, at all events, accustomed as it was to the wealth of foliage at Homewood, to the stately trees and bushy shrubs, and matured gardens, and lawns covered with soft [Pg 112] old turf, recoiled with horror from the naked coldness of Mr. ”

“ On 2 Jan. 1872 they removed from London and settled in the New Forest, Hampshire, where Miss Wood, a wealthy lady, had purchased for them a residence and a farm, known as New Forest Lodge. She gave 2,250l. for the property, on which there remained a mortgage of 1,000l. Here the community increased to 160 persons, who learnt to regard Mrs. Girling, ‘their mother,’ with tenderness, love, and reverence. She owed her authority over her people to her belief in herself and to her great force of will. Their faith in her endured through cold, hunger, and suffering, and many and repeated misfortunes. ”

“ Gatewood’s voice was thick and blurred—I could imagine the boiling that was going on inside him.
“Good!” came the brisk voice. “Put a piece of paper around it, and leave the house with it, right away! Walk down Clay street, keeping on the same side as your house. Don’t walk too fast and keep walking. If everything’s all right, and there’s no elbows tagging along, somebody’ll come up to you between your house and the water-front. They’ll have a handkerchief up to their face for a second, and then they’ll let it fall to the ground. ”

“ Homer meanwhile stood a moment irresolute, as the wagon disappeared. He had spoken upon impulse when, in answer to Gamaliel's inquiry, he said he was going to Mr. Carroll's. It was the first name that entered his head, and chosen for that reason.
Homer had once gone a great deal to old Mr. Carroll's, but never had resumed the visits since his return to the farm. He shrank morbidly from observation then, and old Mr. Carroll's eyes were sharp. This night, however, he decided to go in; he feared no man's eyes now. He rapped at the door and waited. ”

“ He insisted that the new mortgage should be made out in Homer's name. He wanted this open-browed, strong, resolute young man for his debtor, and not the vacillating old man, who looked as if no responsibility would trouble him long. So the farm was transferred to Homer's name, and the mortgage also.
Homer resumed his old life unfalteringly. He wrote and told Her all about his change of plans, and she replied to his letters regularly. Her letters were not very satisfying; women of her fibre are not usually very fascinating on paper. ”

“ Mr Dombey's mansion, if it be a gap among the other houses any longer, is only so because it is not to be vied with in its brightness, and haughtily casts them off. The saying is, that home is home, be it never so homely. If it hold good in the opposite contingency, and home is home be it never so stately, what an altar to the Household Gods is raised up here! ”

“ Carrie overheard you telling Lenora, and when she found that she must die she wrote it on a piece of paper, and consigned it to Willie's care!"
Several times Mrs. Hamilton essayed to speak, but the words died away in her throat, until at last, summoning all her boldness, she said, in a hoarse whisper, "But the homestead is mine—mine forever, and we'll see how delightful I can make your home!"
"I'll save you that trouble, madam," said Walter, rising and advancing toward the door. "Neither my sister nor myself will remain beneath the same roof which shelters you. ”

“ Homer turned away abruptly. "Better keep his wonderment to himself," he muttered, with a frown. "They better all keep their amazement to themselves or——" his hand clinched in a very suggestive fashion. Then he had gone for the buffalo robe for Myron to stand on, and as he gazed at her forlorn figure his anger changed to deep and abiding pity, to stern and righteous wrath. So Homer drove Myron home to the empty cottage, with Clem Humphries sitting in the bottom of the wagon, with his feet dangling over the tailboard, a quid of tobacco in his mouth, peace within his bosom. ”

“ The name of Earlswood, significant to modern ears only of the great idiot asylum there, derives from them. Place-names down [Pg 173] in these levels ending in “wood” recall the dense forests that once overspread Holmesdale: Ewood, Norwood, Charlwood, Hartswood, Hookwood—vast glades of oak and beech, where the hogs roamed and the prototypes of Gyrth, the swineherd, tended them, in the consideration of the Norman lords of little more value than the pigs they herded. The scattered “leys”—Horley, Crawley, Kennersley, and the like—allude to the clearings or pastures amid the forest. ”

“ And what more holy than a mother?
"God knows," he said to himself, as he strode along that night to the village, "a woman needs to be pretty bad before she's not good enough for the average man!" He had reached the fence round the Holder cottage—that fence in which the gaps grew greater and greater as old Mrs. Holder used the pickets for kindling-wood—and was just about to enter quietly, when Gamaliel Deans drove up. He recognized Homer and called out:
"Hi, there! Ho! What are you lookin' for?"
"A lift out to old Carroll's," said Homer promptly, cursing Gamaliel in his heart. ”

“ Homer rose and made a formal proposition on the lines which he had suggested to Myron. It was carried at once. Mr. White was the other Jamestown member of the council, and he was much more concerned about getting home to take his cattle to the lake to water them than about anything else. He made no objection, and the other members of the council had matters relative to their own districts that they were anxious to have considered. The council meetings were open to every one, and the school-house was crowded with village people. ”

“ O’Gar, Lusk and Thode were out in the street, keeping an eye on the house and neighborhood.
At midnight Harvey Gatewood went to bed. I declined a bed in favor of the library couch, which I dragged over beside the telephone, an extension of which was in Gatewood’s bedroom.
At two-thirty the bell rang. I listened in while Gatewood talked from his bed.
A man’s voice, crisp and curt: “Gatewood?” ”